Herbert is among a growing number of American children feeling emotionally neglected as parents dote on sponsored children.

“My dad missed my open house at school, but took a week off work to visit our sponsored child in the Dominican Republic,” says 14-year-old Lauren Quigley of Mystic, Conn. “What am I supposed to think?”

Her brother Jim Jr. complains that his family “spent our last two vacations visiting sponsored kids” and that “Hawaii has disappeared from the map since Mom and Dad discovered the Dominican.”

To many U.S. children, sponsored kids seem to have it good. In photographs they appear well-dressed and happy, living in a tropical paradise and getting free money from the U.S.

“We’re funding their lifestyle of leisure,” claims Jim Jr. “I don’t even get an allowance.”

Herb’s mother recently told him he had to get a summer job to buy school clothes for the fall — while at the same time she was packing “elaborate care packages” for the “Honduran and Cambodian wings of our family.”

Worse, Lauren says her parents are making her pay her way through college, but are setting up a college fund for their sponsored kids.

“I should just fork over my inheritance to them now,” she says.

On a recent family trip to the Dominican, Lauren’s mother and father burst into tears upon meeting their sponsored children and “pretty much ignored us bio-kids for the rest of the trip,” except to point out how lucky they had it in the States.

“They would say, ‘Look at this — no bed, just a cloth on the bare ground. Can you imagine having a bedroom like this?'” Lauren says.

The biological Quigley children would dutifully answer, “No.”

Their parents promptly signed up to sponsor five more, for a total of eight. Now they are constantly writing letters and sending gifts to the overseas kids.

“I’ve become invisible,” says Lauren.

The Dillinger kids broke into open revolt when their parents PhotoShopped the sponsored children into the family Christmas card portrait. On Christmas morning, their mother set out framed photos of all seven sponsored children so it would be “like having the whole family here.”

Herb boycotted the morning and threatened to “move into a shack in the back yard” to see if that re-captured his parents’ attention. His sister Emily threatened to seek wealthy sponsor parents to help her buy an iPod and flip phone. She even created a profile sheet of herself, with a photograph.

Their parents dismissed the children’s outbursts, then talked of inviting the sponsored children to the next family reunion.

“I hope the Hondurans make it,” says Herb. “Then our relatives can see how crazy things have gotten around here.” •